Month: February 2012

  • Nation & World

    Lady Gaga, Winfrey target bullying

    Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanotta launched the Born This Way Foundation, a youth empowerment initiative, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre on Feb. 29.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A work supreme

    During a lecture that is part of a series of master classes sponsored by Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard Professor Ingrid Monson explored the genius behind John Coltrane’s 1965 jazz album “A Love Supreme.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Your Medical Mind’ explored

    The third John Harvard Book Celebration Lecture featured Harvard doctors and best-selling authors Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, who tackled the topic “Your Medical Mind: How to Decide When Experts Disagree.” The next lecture is March 1 at the Parker Hill Branch of the Boston Public Library in Roxbury.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Feminism, now stalled

    A Harvard law professor, former judge, and ardent feminist points to the cultural impediments that have stalled feminism’s quest for an equal workplace.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shining a spotlight into darkness

    Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Helen Whitney opens a three-day series of William Belden Noble lectures titled “Spiritual Landscapes: A Life in Film.” Her work draws out examples of how faith can foster not only inner peace, but also public turmoil.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Circumstances that color our perception

    Dozens of Harvard faculty and students gathered at Emerson Hall on Feb. 23 to ponder the nature of perception with Ned Block, the Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU) and one of the country’s leading thinkers on consciousness. Block’s lecture, “How Empirical Facts about Attention Transform Traditional Philosophical…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Funding success, and finding it

    Four years ago, Harvard’s Office of Technology Development launched its Accelerator Fund, a $10 million revolving account to be used as a bridge across the “valley” between creation and development. The fund is proving to be just such a bridge.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The business of changing the world

    What will the next generation of social entrepreneurs need to succeed? Analysts debated the future of the budding field — and Harvard students demonstrated it — at Harvard Kennedy School on Feb. 24.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Legend is recognized

    Nine-time Grammy winner John Legend was serenaded by Harvard singers and had a front-row seat to the student dance performances at the 27th Cultural Rhythms, an annual festival hosted by the Harvard Foundation, on Feb. 25.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Vogel wins Gelber Prize for book

    Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus Ezra F. Vogel has won the 2012 Lionel Gelber Prize for his book “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.”

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Guardian editor to lecture, receive honors

    Alan Rusbridger, editor of the British-based Guardian newspaper, will address an audience of students, faculty, journalists, and members of the public on March 6 at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Evolutionary question, answered

    A new paper shows that earlier studies of the peppered moth are “completely correct” — the moths evolved darker coloration via natural selection to better camouflage themselves during the height of the Industrial Revolution, then evolved back to their natural, mottled black-and-white color as air quality improved.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Five named Sloan Fellows

    Five professors have been named Sloan Fellows by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    May 14 memorial for David Wheeler

    A memorial service has been set for longtime A.R.T. resident director David Wheeler, who died Jan. 4.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Model situation?

    Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown that the primary explanation for the reduction in CO2 emissions from power generation that year was that a decrease in the price of natural gas reduced the industry’s reliance on coal.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Penn stuns Harvard, 55-54

    The Harvard men’s basketball team controlled much of the second half, but Ivy League rival Penn scored 15 of the last 20 points to stun the Crimson, 55-54 on Feb 25. The Crimson face Columbia on March 2.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Genetic mechanics

    As reported in the online version of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology on Feb. 5, researchers have produced 3-D images of the protein system that works to repair DNA. The images reveal that the proteins can actually alter their shape in what amounts to a genetic “pat-down,” or a way for the mechanism to identify…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Challenges to address

    The issues selected for the President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship were announced during a special kickoff on Wednesday at the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab), which is hosting the challenge.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nanoparticles shine with customizable color

    Engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new kind of tunable color filter that uses optical nanoantennas to obtain precise control of color output. The advance has the potential for application in televisions and biological imaging, and could even be used to create invisible security tags to mark currency.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rousseau occupies Houghton

    On the tricentennial celebration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s birth, the author and philosopher is being honored with an exhibition of his works at the Houghton Library. “Rousseau and Human Rights” continues through March 23.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Historian’s book a prize finalist

    Professor Maya Jasanoff is one of three finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize for “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” published by Knopf.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    In the genes, but which ones?

    A team of researchers, led Harvard Professor David I. Laibson and Christopher F. Chabris of Union College, has found that virtually all claims that intelligence is associated with specific genes are wrong.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Barbara Lindsay Norton, 20-year staffer, dies

    Barbara Lindsay Norton, a longtime Harvard employee, died on Feb. 17 in North Andover, Mass., after illness.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Eight from Harvard headed Down Under

    The Harvard Club of Australia Foundation has announced fellowship awards to eight accomplished Harvard researchers intending collaborative scientific research in Australia during 2012, and to two Australian researchers headed to Harvard.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sabeti named Young Global Leader

    Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Pardis Sabeti has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    From V-2 rocket to moon landing

    A new book explores the connections among World War II scientists, the V-2 missile, and the U.S. race to the moon, led by German émigré Wernher von Braun.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    India to retain economic ties to Iran

    Though India shares global concerns about the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran and is working to reduce its reliance on Iranian oil, India needs to continue fuel imports that are critical to the welfare of millions of people, said India’s ambassador to the United States.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Superstar teachers

    As leaders in government and business search for ways to strengthen the U.S. recovery, new research from faculty at Harvard and Columbia indicates that elementary school teachers have an impact on how much their students earn as adults and, by extension, on the nation’s economy.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In distant space, a water world

    Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added a new type of planet to the mix. By analyzing the previously discovered world GJ1214b, astronomer Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues proved that it is a water world enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fostering global understanding

    A panel of scholars made up of the directors of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centers met to discuss how to promote better understanding between the Islamic world and the West.

    6 minutes